Take Two
by crazybeagle
Summary: AU of 7.02. The Leviathans have all vanished, but things are never that simple. Especially when, on the floor of the panic room, there lie two dark-haired children: one with the face of a former friend and one with the face of a former enemy.
1. Chapter 1

**Take Two**

**Chapter One**

**Spoilers up to 7.02. Written for the 2011 Supernatural Reverse-Bang on Livejournal. If you go to my livejournal, crazybeagle (dot) livejournal (dot) com, you can check out the absolutely amazing illustrations that farfadine, the watercolor artist I worked with, created for this story.**

**Part one of five.**

The souls were gone.

The Leviathans were gone too, apparently. They'd have to make damn sure of that fact, but after a supernova of light when the souls collided with the gaping black holes in reality that were the disembodied Leviathans, and both exploded into a shower of white-hot sparks that burned their skin before fizzling out down on the concrete. Light and thunder ricocheting off the impenetrable iron walls of the panic room, consuming itself—_like Leviathan pinball, _Bobby had said.

They'd been prepared to leave for Bootback as per Death's instructions, but when Cas had stumbled through Bobby's door, begging for help and telling them it was too late, he couldn't hold back either souls or Leviathans anymore, they'd foregone all plans to do the ritual and Dean and Sam had helped drag him down to the panic room. The hope was, when Cas exploded, as he seemed to think that he would, and stat, that they could somewhat contain it in there, even temporarily, at least enough to keep them all from dying. In retrospect, it probably would've been smarter just to have dropped him off right in the doorway and slammed the door shut immediately rather than try to lug him over to the bed (because it wasn't like he really deserved that anyway) while Bobby waited just in the doorway for them, holding the door closed but unlatched behind him. But for whatever it was worth, they were unscathed, the Leviathans and souls apparently vanished.

But they all knew, things were never that simple.

They knew, because lying side-by-side on the dusty floor of the panic room, in a puddle of thick black liquid, were two pale, unconscious, dark-haired children. A boy and a girl.

So yeah.

Things were never that simple.

But what was of far more interest to Dean than what had just occurred between the souls and the Leviathans, or even the children—_children—_lying on the floor, was the fact that, sometime while the friggin' lights show or whatever it was had been going on, Sam had been driven to his knees, arms wrapped around himself, trembling.

"Sam?" A second later and Dean was down on his own knees, an arm hovering over Sam's back, sure that this was another one of the hallucinations that according to Death, Sam had not been telling them about.

Except, apparently, he was wrong. Because Sam had slapped a hand over his mouth, screwed his eyes shut, and was now coughing, hard and deep, shoulders heaving.

"Sam!" he repeated. Sam just kept coughing, nearly pitching forward onto the floor from the force of it. When it finally stopped, it stopped abruptly. Dazed, Sam let himself lean back until he was sitting, Dean catching him so he didn't slam his head into the wall behind them. He held up his hand, still cupped, expression uncomprehending as he looked at it.

His palm was full of blood. Bright. It coated his fingers, seeped out between them to drip onto the floor.

Dean's heart skipped a beat and a half at the sight of it. One of the children on the floor stirred feebly, the boy, maybe, but Dean ignored him. Bobby, somewhere close by, started to say something, but his voice was cut off when Sam coughed again, gagged, and spat out another, massive mouthful onto the gritty floor.

"Sam, hey—" He took Sam's shoulders, barely hearing his own words over the roaring in his ears or the blind panic mounting in his chest. "What's wrong? Did the Leviathans…" He didn't think the Leviathans or the souls, if that's what those even _were_, had gotten near enough to any of them to do any damage—bouncing around at least a good 15 feet over their heads. But it would be just their luck, wouldn't it, if one rogue one had bounced away from the rest and hurt Sam.

But Sam was shaking his head, brow furrowed. He spat out another mouthful of blood, wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, and rasped out, "No…'m fine."

Dean snorted. The sound was vaguely hysterical. "No. Whatever you are, it's not friggin' _fine_." He wiped away some of the blood on Sam's chin with his own sleeve. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw one of the children sit up. Bobby made a noise of surprise. Dean glanced at the child—the boy—but as weird-assed as _that _was, he needed to let Bobby deal with it.

"No, seriously," Sam said, after spitting again and clearing his throat. "I'm not hurt, nothing hurts…feel okay now. Except for, uh…" he gestured at the blood, down the front of his shirt and splattered on the floor, a genuinely baffled expression is his face.

"Yeah, except for that," Dean muttered. "Just don't move, okay?"

Sam blinked and nodded.

"Bobby!" Dean called over one shoulder. "We need some help here! Sam's—"

Sam cut him off. "Dean." His voice was odd. Small.

Dean whipped back around, anxious. "Yeah?"

Sam pointed, eyes wide, at the blood on the ground.

Something was…off. It was shifting, churning, the color of it going from the vivid red of fresh blood to the sickly dark burgundy of an old wound. And it was collecting, all of it, into a single pool—running off of Sam's hands, and even off of where it had sunk in splotches onto his shirt, leaving not a single stain behind, onto the ground to flow into the growing puddle before them.

Sam had gone pale, and he was blinking rapidly down at the blood, breath hitching. "What…I don't…_Dean_?"

As freaky as this new development in their up-to-this-point exceedingly freaky day was, watching his brother's blood boiling on the floor—and it was, too, bubbling now and smoking a little—what really hit Dean with a jolt at that moment was a glimpse of Sam looking this freaked to hell about something that he must have thought that he was hallucinating. Was this the same sort of fear that he was clamping down on all the time, seeing things that weren't really there, but holding it together anyway to try and save face?

Well shit.

But the blood?

That was real.

And what the freaking _hell_….?

"Bobby?" Dean called again, while both he and Sam watched, mesmerized, as the blood actually friggin' started to _roll away _from them, stretching across the floor in some sinister miniature tide, over towards the bodies of the children.

Or, _body. _The girl was still lying in the center of the floor on her stomach, her limbs sprawled out, an odd shroud the same colorless dirty shade as the flood draped across her body. The boy, however, was standing, clad in what looked like a bloody, stained white men's oxford that hung down below his knees. He was still next to the girl, but he was looking in their direction curiously, bright blue eyes like lamps widening as his gaze flicked between them and the blood.

Taking in the sight of the boy, Dean felt his mouth fall open. _Is that…how the hell….?_

Bobby, who he could finally see standing a few feet away from the boy, was obviously undergoing a similar thought process, his eyes practically bulging out of his head as he stared at the boy, a gun he'd thought to grab raised.

"Cas?" Dean spluttered.

The boy nodded, once, gravely. "Hello, Dean." The voice was a bit lower than a kid of, what, seven, eight, maybe, should be, but it was very obviously the voice of a child, clear and small.

"What the…what—" He meant to say something along the lines of _WHAT the hell are you_, but he was cut off when Sam tugged at his sleeve and pointed at the blood. It had flowed completely over to where the girl was lying, running into the goo puddle around her, making the black liquid part where it flowed. It twined up one thin arm, the color startling and deadly against the pallor of her skin, and disappeared under her shoulder and curtain of hair. The girl twitched and shuddered, little gasps permeating the tense silence, before she startled awake with a cry. Her head snapped up.

Heavy-lidded, dark browed, her brown eyes wild and scared, her gaze roved around the room, her breaths coming in harsh pants. She was, to Dean's best approximation, five years old, six, something around there. She sat up, tucked her legs underneath her, pulled the dusty fabric tighter around herself, and stared back at them.

Cas—eight-year-old freaking _Cas_—looked at her, frowning, eyes darkening with obvious recognition. "That's—"

"Ruby," Sam finished, voice astonished but certain.

"_Ruby_?" Dean practically choked on the word.

What. The _fuck._

"Yes," Cas said, with obvious distaste.

So yeah.

This was anything but _simple._

_..._

"You gonna let me out of here?" came a tiny, shrill, annoyed voice from behind the panic room door.

"No," Dean and Sam yelled, together.

"'M gonna call CPS on your asses," came the response, tinny where it echoed off the panic room walls. "It's cold in here!"

Dean, Sam, and Bobby, along with a hastily handcuffed Cas—though the cuffs kept threatening to slip off his skinny wrists—were standing outside the door of the panic room, the girl who was allegedly Ruby locked inside the panic room behind them.

Bobby was shaking his head. "What…_is _she?" he asked, voice baffled, pointing at the door. He looked at Cas. "Hell, what're _you_?"

Cas shrugged. "The closest approximation I can make is that I am now a human child."

"_What_?" Dean snapped. "How?"

"And what happened to our Leviathan pals, and the souls?" Bobby asked. "I think you better tell us that first. That's more to the point, us makin' sure we don't have another apocalypse on our hands and all."

"I believe that they consumed each other," Cas said, brow furrowing. "They were…already warring within me by the time that I came to you."  
>"Warring?" it was Sam who spoke now. He looked a little worse for wear, sitting on the stairs with his arms wrapped around his knees, staring at one fixed spot on the floor, and Dean wondered if he was having a hard time keeping reality straight after the blood incident. But as far as he could tell, he'd been right about choking up the blood having not actually hurt him.<p>

"Yes." Cas looked pained, his Adam's apple bobbing a little before he next spoke. Eyes that contained far too much startling depth, and anguish, to belong to a child looked up at them. "I could hear…I could hear their whispering to one another while they were still inside me. Purgatory is the turf of the Leviathans. How do you think that they would have treated what they viewed as intruders on their turf? Once inside me, and then again once contained within the panic room, the footing was much more…even."

"So they could fight each other?" Dean asked.

"Yes." Cas nodded. "On an earthly plane, the souls are, as you saw—" he shifted uncomfortably on his feet, looking ashamed—"are quite potent. In the vast numbers in which I had consumed them, they could hold their own against the Leviathans, who need a physical body to wreak havoc here but are weaker when either forced into a single body too weak to contain them or else disembodied altogether."

"Would you let me _out_!" Ruby screeched. "Or at least give me a damn blanket! And if there's still Leviathans in here hiding somewhere I swear…"

Dean ignored her. "So where did they all go?"

"The Leviathans were destroyed, I believe," Cas said. "I cannot say for certain, but it would appear that way." His brows knit. "The souls, however, it is harder to say. No soul can truly cease to exist. I believe they may have dissipated, returned to Purgatory."  
>"How? We didn't pop the lid for them to get back through," Bobby said.<p>

"Presumably the same route taken by any soul of a monster when that monster is killed. They know the way. Instinctually."

"Okay," Dean began. He was willing to go with all that, for now. Less to think about at the moment. But what he really wanted to know? "But would you please explain to us why exactly you're a friggin' _kid_? And how _she _got here?" He gestured rather violently at the door, jaw clenched tight.

Because, and need he reiterate: _Ruby? _What. The _fuck_.

"I can explain if you bring me a damn parka," Ruby snapped, her voice much closer now, the door of the panic room shaking where she was likely banging on it with tiny fists. "And I'm human, assholes, so I can't hurt you anyway."

"She is?"

"I believe she is," Cas said. "And it is cold in there, which I suppose is alright if you do intend to let her freeze to death—"

"Screw you, Castiel," came Ruby's voice.

"Balls," Bobby muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face.

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

**Take Two **

**Chapter 2**

They _were _both human, as far as they could tell. Bobby put them through every test he could think of, salt, iron, and holy water for Ruby, and some Enochian sigils and jargon that they'd found from some of Bobby's books to test for the presence of angels for Cas. Everything checked out.

And even _looking _at them, now, sitting at Bobby's kitchen table while their legs dangled off chairs that were too tall for them, faded old concert t-shirts of Dean's hanging off of them like big burlap sacks and overly large socks hanging off their feet and bunching around their ankles while they both ravenously dug into bowls of macaroni and cheese and mugs of hot chocolate that Bobby had hastily made for them, they honest-to-God seemed like kids. Nothing abnormal—or paranormal—about them.

Except that their eyes betrayed them—Ruby's hard, hateful, and flinty, Cas's calculating and remorseful—countenances that no child any of them could think of could have. It was that lack of innocence visible there that gave them away.

Cas had explained, and while it sounded pretty damn spectacular, they couldn't _not _believe it, because it wasn't like they had any better explanation to go off of here. An angel's grace, even one as corroded as Cas's had become from having the souls and leviathans inside of him, was still potent enough, even disembodied, to command one or two of the souls that were drifting around before they got caught in the fray with the Leviathans. Disembodied, Cas said, his Grace was automatically inclined to try and find an anchor to this plane—a vessel—or else he'd dissipate, go wherever angels went when they died ("_although I do not know where that might be, that was revelation to which I was never privy"_). He had only the destroyed body of his vessel to work with, and even with the great raw power from the souls, which he could essentially command to do whatever he wished, there was still only so much one could do with dead matter. An anchor was still an anchor, though, and Jimmy Novak's body had held him for long enough that he was inclined to try anyhow. And shaping the body into a smaller one he could animate and occupy had been easier than attempting to resurrect Jimmy and get his consent to possess him again. Humans died slowly, too, and in phases—the body might have been dead, but not all the cells or tissues died at the same time, and there was still enough living matter to work with that utilizing the living matter and re-animating only a portion of the dead matter had been easier than, as Dean said, "zombiefying" Jimmy's body. Not that any of this had consciously occurred to Cas until after he had done it—it had been a near-automatic reflex of his Grace to preserve itself, and one that he could never have accomplished without the souls. That done, the power of the souls spent and his Grace cut off from heaven now that he was locked inside a human body, here Cas was. For all intents and purposes, human.

"Well what about her?" Dean jerked a thumb at Ruby. Ruby glowered at him. "Where did she even _come_ from?"

"She was one of the souls I consumed," Cas said.

"She was in Purgatory?" Bobby asked, frowning over his coffee. "How the hell'd she get there? I thought she—"

Ruby snorted. "Do you really think we just go _poof _out of existence when you kill us, dumbass?" Everybody just looked at her. She sighed melodramatically, narrow shoulders rising and falling, and speared her fork around her mostly empty plate. "Obviously I have some explaining to do, because you're all too dense to understand the most basic of metaphysical concepts. But first," she brandished her fork at them. "More mac and cheese or I'm not saying a word. I'd get it myself, but," she wiggled around a bit, expression agitated, "you tied me to the chair, remember?"

"Fine," Bobby groused, getting up and crossing to the stove. He spooned a gluey pile of macaroni onto Ruby's plate. "Talk. And you ain't gettin' up until you do."

"Alright, whatever," she said, spearing macaroni and cramming some into her mouth. "So Castiel already said souls can't be destroyed, right? They're all energy. Can't destroy energy." She paused, chewing. "So what," she said, "do you think happens to a demon's soul when, say, a couple of dim-witted traitors run a knife through her gut?" Her eyes landed on Sam. He glared right back at her, evenly. "Well we don't go to Hell, otherwise we could just come back. Which believe me, I'd have done a _long_ time ago, and ran that same damn knife through _all _your asses."  
>"You know, you ain't helpin' your case, here," Bobby said, raising an eyebrow.<p>

She shrugged. "Well it's the truth. And you can't keep me tied to this chair forever."

"You wanna try us?" Dean smirked at her.

"_Any_way," she said, ignoring him, "there aren't many dead demons in the world, and most of them that are are thanks to you four. But when a demon dies, and they don't go to Hell, and they don't go to Heaven, where do you think they go? A place for souls that don't belong anywhere."

"Purgatory," Cas supplied quietly.

"I think they got that, thanks," Ruby snapped. "So I was hanging out down in that charming place thanks to each and every one of _you_," she gestured around with the fork clenched in her tiny fist, "nice and warm and toasty with some old friends of mine, Alistair, Azazel, Lilith, you know, just like old times, those charming Leviathans riding _all _of our asses, when one day, right next to my own little niche of paradise, a big old hole is ripped right through the fabric of Purgatory. And so I took it, obviously, anything to get the hell out. Only to find," she shot an annoyed look at Cas here, who stared impassively back, "myself get sucked right down Castiel's gullet." She shuddered. "Not that it was very cozy in there or anything. But let me tell you," she flashed a grin here, "Oh, the interesting things I heard in that brain of yours, Cas. Sounds like you all have had an interesting four years. Beating Lucifer and all." She now regarded them all coldly. "Yeah, congratulations on that one, Sam."

"Thanks," Sam said tersely.

She rolled her eyes. "So how'd I get stuck in this pathetic little meatsuit then? Really, I just followed Cas's lead. If he could do it, so could I. After all, I had an anchor." She smiled sweetly at Sam.

"The blood," he muttered.

"Yup," she said, twirling the fork. "All of it mine, still crawling along through _your _veins. God, I forgot what a greedy bloodsucking bastard you were back then."

Sam's eyes cut away, down at his own coffee mug. "Shut up," Dean snapped.

"Thought you didn't want me to," she said smugly. "Anyway, a demon soul is a hell of a lot more powerful than some pathetic angel's grace, and really, all that _ashes to ashes, dust to dust _thing is more accurate than people think, and it wasn't like there was any shortage of _dust _in that basement. That plus the power that was already in the blood, and the couple souls I managed to wrangle into being my bitches, and I came up with this little number," she said, looking down at her hands and arms. "Though she's a plain little thing, in my opinion."

"But you're not a demon anymore," Bobby pointed out. "How?"

She looked a little miffed at that. "Yes, I am," she said primly. "Just inconveniently landlocked. For the time being."  
>"I'm not so sure," Cas said. He stifled a yawn. Both he and Ruby looked utterly exhausted, bags under their eyes marring smooth little faces—the toll of being reborn coupled with the sedating effect of comfort food, probably. All in all he just looked like a kid up past his bedtime, and it was honestly becoming a little difficult for Dean to be able to remind himself that <em>no, this isn't a kid, this is Cas, Castiel, Castiel who betrayed us, Castiel who broke my brother's mind….<em>

"What do you mean?" Ruby's dark eyes flashed towards him, burning with defiance.

"Because purgatory is aptly named," Cas said. "A place to purge one of impurities, among other things. It is not merely the realm of monsters. Many monsters were, after all, once human. As were all demons. A certain amount of time spent there would purge the soul of those…impurities, and make the soul fit for either heaven or hell. For those souls, purgatory is a temporary holding place."  
>"So?" Ruby said, definitely seething now. "I never got to leave."<p>

"You may be more demon than human," Cas said coldly, "but if you were fully a demon still, you would not be locked into your body. The salt and holy water would have hurt you. For practical purposes, your soul is now—"

"Human," Dean finished, now grinning. "Payback's a bitch, huh?"

Cas nodded. Ruby glowered down at her macaroni. "And time will tell," Cas added, "whether this state of being will continue to instill you with humanity."  
>"Oh, screw you all," Ruby said, pushing her pasta away. A moment of seething silence, during which she was fixing the tabletop with a glare that could have stripped its varnish clear off, and then lifted her gaze towards Sam, a little smile playing on her lips. Sam caught her eye briefly, then looked away. Dean had been watching Sam out of the corner of his eye this whole time—he'd spent most of this time gripping his mug so tightly that Dean thought it was a wonder it didn't crumble to dust beneath his hands, his jaw clenched, forcing his breathing to remain steady and trying not to let his gaze wander around the room. He didn't look like he was holding it together very well, to say the least. God, if Cas wasn't freaking <em>eight years old <em>and human he'd _so _be killing his ass six ways from Sunday for this right about now…

Ruby dropped the fork and laced her fingers together, leaning forward on her elbows toward Sam. "So," she said, her high voice light, conversational. "How are you doing these days, Sam?"

"Fuck off," Sam muttered, still not looking at her.

She clucked her tongue. "Language, Sam," she said, then grinned, sickly-sweet. "I'm five, remember?" Sam didn't respond. Ruby's smile curled into a sneer. "So how's it feel, huh? Having a soul that's _skinned alive_ and all?"

Sam's eyes flashed toward her, startled.

"Oh yeah, I know all about that, remember?" She tapped her forehead. "I've seen it. Because Cas has seen it. And I also know," she said, leaning closer towards him over the tabletop, "that that little wall in your noggin was the one thing standing between you and a world of hurt. And you know who else knew that?" She turned her head towards Cas, who had been watching her, expression stony. She snorted. "And let me tell you, even _before_ he changed his mind about fixing you, it wasn't like he had any sort of _plan_. He was just hoping the souls would give him enough juice to pull the world's biggest psycho-band-aid out of his ass. And if not?" She shrugged. "Well I guess it doesn't matter now, does it?"

Sam lifted his chin a bit, obviously trying for defiance but not quite managing it. "Guess not," he said.

Dean's eyes flicked to Cas, whose gaze had fallen, shoulders slumped, and then back to Ruby, and had to bite back the urge to reach over the table and strangle them both. Kids or no, the taunting look that morphed Ruby's little face into something cruel, and the sheer heaviness of obvious guilt that darkened Cas's features, would've made it perfectly damn clear to anybody that these weren't _just kids, _these were never the kinds of faces that _just kids _could ever possess.

Ruby fixed Sam with a patronizing smile. "Tough guy, huh. That's cute, Sam. Really."

"Leave him alone," Dean growled.

"Make me." Her eyes never left Sam.

"Dean," Bobby said, warningly, before Dean ever made it out of his chair. Dean complied, anger burning in his gut but staying put. Seriously, though, why couldn't they at least gag her or something?

"I'd _love _to know what kind of twisted crap is bouncing around that brain of yours, Sam. I really would." Her eyes twinkled with obvious delight. "Cas saw a little bit of it, when he touched the wall, you know, but he barely scratched the surface. And after what you did to Lucifer? I know he fried you up extra crispy. Gave you a lot to…you know, remember."

"And what's that got to do with you?" Sam looked her full in the face, but Dean saw him suppress a flinch when he met her eyes.

"Nothing," she shrugged. "I just love watching you squirm, is all. And that's just what you've been doing, since I showed up, is _squirm. _Gotta be tough, huh, keeping your realities sorted, right? After all…" She gestured down at herself, unable to mask a slight grimace of distaste as she did so. "This isn't supposed to be possible, is it? I'm not supposed to be here. So what's really more fucked up right now: reality, or your brain?"

"You're real," Sam said, without much conviction.

"Whatever you say, champ," she said, amused. "And I'm guessing my little blood trick didn't help you much either, huh?"

Sam glanced down at his hands, sitting on the tabletop. Dean saw him wince, and wondered whether or not he was still seeing blood on them. His fingers twitched.

Ruby giggled. "Drip," she muttered. "Drip, drip, drip…"

"That's _enough_," Bobby barked, but Sam had half-risen from his chair. A second later, so had Dean.

Sam just stood there for a moment, breaths shallow and rapid, eyes flicking between his hands, Ruby, and Cas. Eventually he wheeled around to face Dean. "I don't—" he began. "I n-need to—" Without finishing his words, he turned towards the doorway and stumbled out of the room.

"Sam, wait—" Dean took a few steps after him, stopped, scrubbed a tired hand through his hair, and muttered, "Shit…."

"What're you standin' there for, go after him!" Bobby waved Dean off. "See if you can talk him down."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, but—" He gestured vaguely towards Ruby and Cas.

"Don't worry. I got these two knuckleheads under control."

"We promise to leave him in one piece," Ruby said, with a look at Bobby that suggested she'd rather do anything but.

"She won't hurt anyone," Cas said firmly.

"Oh yeah, like you're one to talk about not hurting people." She looked pointedly at the doorway. Cas looked away.

Dean swore under his breath and took off after Sam.

...

"Are you gonna untie me anytime soon?" Ruby asked, maybe fifteen minutes later. She'd folded her arms on the tabletop and rested her chin on them, yawning. Her short legs were swinging idly under the table.

"No," Bobby said flatly. Sam and Dean hadn't returned, but about five minutes ago he'd heard something that sounded like panicked yelling coming from one of the bedrooms overhead.

"Fine," she said. "'M going to sleep anyway." And within the space of maybe two more minutes, she had, slumped over on the table. Little snores punctuated the silence.

Cas looked like he wanted to say something, but was not quite sure how to articulate it. He took intermittent sips out of what was now cold hot chocolate.

Bobby rolled his eyes, thinking about elephants in the room, shook his head, stood, and began clearing the table. Cas looked at the doorway through which Dean had disappeared, looking uncertain.

"I wouldn't follow him if I were you," Bobby muttered. "Whatever's goin' on in Sam's head right now is all on you, so unless you want your ass kicked…"

Cas nodded; he'd expected this, obviously. "He doesn't trust me."

"Well I sure as hell don't either." Bobby piled the dishes into the sink.

Cas was silent. When Bobby came back to the table, fresh cup of coffee in his hands, he was staring down at his hands laying limp in his lap. He really did look exhausted, and he could've used a bath, too—his short hair was tousled and greasy, and there were black smudges left from the goo on the panic room floor smudged on his face, arms, and neck. "I don't trust myself," he murmured.

"Well that's good," Bobby said, easing himself down into a chair. "It's a start, I guess."

"I guess," Cas echoed. Next to him, her nose smudged with dirt, Ruby snored on.

Looking at the two of them, Bobby knew they had their work cut out for them. He almost wondered if he'd prefer hedging his bets with the Leviathans.

Well, they'd find out.

**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

**Take Two**

**Chapter 3**

A day and a half later and they were still at a loss as to what to do with their…acquisitions. First thing was first, though, Bobby dug up what turned out to be a few rituals to perform on Ruby. One was fairly straightforward and had only required raiding a couple closets, a spice rack, and a local butcher shop to acquire the ingredients, a spell that Bobby was familiar enough with from a few past cases, but only ever against enemies who he'd been able to reason with rather than been forced to kill—a spell that imposed a lifelong ban on the use of witchcraft. They'd done it to her while she'd been asleep the following night and she'd woken up utterly furious, the look in her eye promising imminent death to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

At that point, they'd had to resort to just letting her sit on Bobby's couch and seethe, her knees pulled up to her chest under another one of Dean's giant t-shirts, glaring at the television as though it had personally offended her. They hadn't tied her up again—Bobby had hid all the weapons in the house—but that didn't mean that they weren't watching her like a hawk.

Or Cas, for that matter. He was sitting on the couch as far from Ruby as possible, his hair wet from a shower, also in a tee paired with an enormous pair of boxers, his scrawny legs crossed and his eyes focused dully on the television—some old World War II documentary—as well. He'd barely said a word to anybody all day.

Though it wasn't like they'd talked to him all that much, either.

Dean and Bobby had both pulled up chairs in the living room, beers in hand, for lookout duty. Wasn't like they had anything better to do. Another earlier inspection of the panic room revealed that it was, in fact, empty, and either the Leviathans really were truly dead or had somehow escaped. Either way, for the time being, there wasn't all that much to be done except sit tight, wait for the pizza they'd ordered to arrive, and make that the backstabbing ex-megalomaniac-nuclear-soul-warhead-angel and the ex-evil-demon-bitch didn't get the drop on them.

And Sam was doing the dishes. They could hear water running and pots and pans clattering and shifting from the kitchen. He hadn't spoken much either, just assured Dean and Bobby he was "fine now, really," and fixed them coffee with breakfast before spending the entire day puttering around the kitchen, randomly cleaning and fixing things—unclogging the drain, replacing a few burnt-out light bulbs, organizing random papers and documents sitting on the countertops, and scrubbing every surface within an inch of its life. God knew the place could use it, but this was anything but an indication that Sam was okay…this was Sam distracting himself.  
>Because if last night's conversation, after Dean had come to find him sitting folded in on himself on the edge of one of the guest bedroom beds, was anything to go by—<em>It's him, Dean. Lucifer. I'm seeing him.—<em>then this was all anything but okay. To the point where Sam couldn't tell if he was still in the cage or not….

He didn't like to think about it.

Every time he'd come to try to check on Sam, keep him company, or offer to help him clean, Sam had just gotten flustered and began dropping things. So he'd eventually left him alone. Not that Dean was overly thrilled about Sam scrubbing pots and pans after the…coping mechanism…that Dean had taught him yesterday, driving his thumb hard into Sam's cut hand and dripping blood onto the worn quilt on the bed to bring Sam _back, here, _with him. But Sam had just found a pair of rubber gloves under the sink, stretched them on carefully over the wad of gauze wrapped around his hand, expression practically daring Dean to try and stop him.

Dean hadn't.

At any rate, he was probably better off alone than he was hanging out with _these two. _

And speaking of these two….

What the hell were they supposed to do with them, anyway?

Dean hadn't entirely ruled out killing them, but as Bobby had pointed out, as understanding as Sheriff Mills generally was about Bobby's…career, the bodies of two children probably wouldn't be something she'd take kindly to having to explain away down at the station.

And, as Ruby pointed out, "You don't really wanna kill me, do you? Because you know where I'll go. And you know I'll just claw my way right back out again. As a demon. And a pissed one at that."

"But ain't that what you want?" Bobby narrowed his eyes at her. "You got no power otherwise."

She sighed, as though she couldn't quite believe what idiots they were and was wearied by it, running her tiny fingers through knotted hair. "_If _I go to back to Hell, who do you think's gonna be waiting for me? Who would just love to punish me big-time for having helped Lucifer? I know your buddy Meg was scared enough of him. Because we both worked for the old boss."

"You mean Crowley."

"No shit. So yeah. Don't wanna die just yet."

"Well then why stay here?" Dean demanded. "Can't be for the top-rated hospitality."

"Because," she said, twirling a strand of hair in her finger, "Unfortunately for me, you three are the best protection I got against Crowley now. If he finds out I'm alive, he'll kick my ass, then he'll kill me, and then he'll kick my ass some more. And when I _do _make it back as a demon again, believe me, I'll be good and pissed."

"So that's why you've been playing nice," Bobby said. "We've got leverage."

She looked annoyed. "That's why I haven't slit your throats, yes. And besides…wouldn't you rather keep an eye on me yourselves as long as I'm stuck here? _Rehabilitate_ me or some shit like that?"

"Alright," Bobby growled. "You've made your point."

"But you put a toe outta line and we're handing you straight over to Crowley with a bow on top," Dean added. "You got that?"  
>"Whatever."<br>"And what about you?" Dean had added to Cas. "You haven't given us a good reason why we shouldn't kill you."

"I don't have one," Cas said simply. His eyes locked with Dean's.

Dean snorted dismissively, took a long swig of his beer. But the underriding question, they both knew, was _Could you bring yourself to do it?_

And they both knew the answer to that.

The doorbell rang. "_Yes_," Ruby said, hopping up from the couch, bouncing up and down on her toes on the ratty carpet. "I swear if it's not the delivery guy, I _am _gonna kill someone…"

...

Their decision made, it wasn't long before Bobby came to the realization of how ill-equipped he really was to have two children living with him. It was the same whenever John had dropped Dean and Sam off with him as young kids, but at least then, they'd always brought their own luggage with them, and Dean had always been good about making sure Bobby knew when they needed something Bobby didn't have. It had always made him grin when he'd found things like _baby shampoo _or _spaghetti-o's _or once, _a Batman comic book _added in sloppy handwriting to the bottom of the grocery list on his fridge.

But if Bobby didn't do something soon, there really _was _a possibility that CPS could come knocking on the door. They didn't have real clothes, or even something as simple as toothbrushes, and Bobby's kitchen was not stocked to support the appetites of two kids. Ruby raided Bobby's junk food stash mercilessly, much to his irritation, a shit-eating grin on her face every time she popped a Dorito or an M&M in her mouth while she flipped the channels at an irritatingly fast pace on the TV. Even Cas seemed to have a hearty enough appetite, though for those first few days, he only ever ate at mealtimes, preferring to spend most of his time wandering for hours on end outside in the salvage yard, a few layers of socks on his feet and an old, holey hoodie that didn't fit Sam anymore draped over him like a robe. He never spoke much.

What was funny? Forging all their paperwork had been the easy part. Cas and Ruby Smith, ages seven and five, cousins, son and daughter of Sam and Dean Smith, brothers, one divorced and one a single parent, all four recently come to live with their loving uncle at Singer Salvage Yard. A friggin' happy family.

Nobody had been thrilled with this arrangement, but it wasn't like they could come up with any better alternative. And at least they had the documents. Bobby had to pull a few favors, here it was, bulletproof: birth certificates, insurance, and documentation that they were homeschooling students.

While Bobby was handling the forgery end of things, Dean and Sam headed out to the Target a county over, to grab everything else they could possibly need, a wad of cash that Bobby wouldn't tell them how he'd acquired in hand to pay for it all. Getting Sam out of the house seemed to have been the right decision—he looked calmer and more put together than he had been the past few days, with something as mundane as pushing a grocery cart under fluorescent lighting alongside a bunch of harried-looking, ordinary people working wonders to take his mind away from Hell. However, he was sort of at a loss as to what sorts of things they should be buying. Dean, fortunately, was more talented in this department, having lived with a "normal" kid in a "normal" house for a year. And as much as it sucked to be thinking about Ben while he was doing this, it wasn't like it wasn't useful now.

Baby shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste, two cheap camping cots because there weren't any beds to be spared, pillows and blankets (Barbie themed for Ruby, Toy Story for Cas, which they both got a bit of a kick out of), a stash of childrens' medicines, enough macaroni and cheese to feed an army, and a ludicrous amount of junk food and juice boxes later, and all that was left to buy was clothing.

For Cas it wasn't much of a problem—when he and Sam were kids, John had mostly left him in charge of picking out clothes for the both of them when it was needed, and he remembered the clerks at Goodwill giggling at him while he perused the racks like a man on a mission searching for the right sizes and weren't stained, holey, or worn-out, while Sam wandered over to the toy section and played, bored, waiting for Dean to come over and dump a ton of things for him to try on into his arms. Bottom line was, Dean was pretty much the king of guestimating clothing sizes in this area, if he did say so himself. They wound up with a couple pairs of jeans, some plain t-shirts that came in different colors all rolled up in one package, socks, boxers, sneakers. Dean held up one pair of jeans, shook them out, and eyed them critically, before shrugging and tossing them into the cart. "If they don't fit right, he can just deal," he said. Sam couldn't have agreed more.

It was a bit more of a problem for Ruby. The first issue they encountered was the fact that, given they had never had the occasion to do so before, they didn't notice until they got some uncomfortably long stares from a handful of moms exactly how creepy it looked when two men wandered through the girls' clothing section. It wasn't until some chick in sweats in her late twenties, balancing a toddler who looked just like her with a mop of gold curls and a pair of sparkly mary-janes on one hip, tapped Dean on the shoulder and demanded, "Excuse me, but what the hell is your problem?" while he was staring, utterly baffled, at a sea of bright color, sequins and glitter hanging from one wall.

"What?" Dean said absently. She cleared her throat impatiently, and he finally looked up from the hypnotically terrifying mass of frilly clothing to the woman and back.

"It's for his daughter," Sam said quickly.

The woman raised unnecessarily penciled eyebrows at him. "Really."

"Yeah. His daughter, uh, my niece. Ruby. She's five."

Sam nodded, earnestly, and Dean just let him talk, finally putting two and two together and feeling a little revolted at the conclusions this woman had obviously drawn.

But Sam was good. Scratch that, Sam was _really _good. Within three minutes he'd woven some heart-wrenching tale of how Dean's house, which he apparently shared with his loving wife and daughter, had burned to the ground, destroying all of their possessions, and now his little girl just needed some new clothes because she had none of her own. And it was Dean's wife—named Katie, apparently—who usually did the clothes shopping for Ruby, but she was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, and Ruby was back with her, unwilling to leave her bedside. And Dean, apparently too bereaved to explain any of this properly himself, needed some help with the shopping. For emotional support and whatnot. Dean did his best to play along; look bereaved and all. The whole time Sam spoke, he had his puppy dog eyes going full force, and any onlooker would surely find it a mortal sin if the woman for a second doubted the sincerity of his words. Sure enough, by the time he'd finished the story, the woman had tears in her eyes.

And in another ten minutes, with the woman's help and watery-eyed sympathy, they had everything they needed: three sets of play clothes, and one flouncy, tulle-skirted dress that looked like a Disney movie had thrown up on it, all in violently bright colors that Ruby was sure to hate, but that they were pretty sure would fit. It was perfect.

The trip was a success, at least until they were nearing the checkout line. Sam didn't say anything, but he could see it in the way that Sam's eyes were scanning the aisles and darting around furtively that he was starting to have a hard time keeping it together. His fingers were digging into the bandage on his palm, and Dean had to make sure he didn't touch any of the clothes during check-out or he'd have gotten blood on them. While the cashier rung them up, and glanced at Sam a few times with concern, Dean handed him a five told him to go grab himself a cup of coffee from the Starbucks counter near the entrance.

When Dean found him again, with a full grocery cart in tow, Sam was sitting at a table, staring at the empty space directly across from him, and muttering. "I'm not a liar," he was saying. "I'm not. You're not real. Go away."

He started and looked up, embarrassed, when Dean cleared his throat. "You ready to go?"

He nodded, a bit too rapidly. "Yeah."

Neither of them mentioned it again.

...

"_Booster shots_?" Ruby's eyebrows shot up. "Are you freaking kidding me?"

She was lounging on the couch the next morning, her hair a disastrous network of rat's nests, dressed in Sam's old greyhound shirt that God-knows-why they kept, since it was at least two sizes too small now and kicking her feet over the edge of the bed. She was shoveling Captain Crunch into her mouth, MTV blaring on in the background.

"Hey, you wanna pass as normal, you gotta take everything that goes along with it," Bobby said. "And childhood diseases ain't fun, or so I hear."

Ruby made a gagging sound. Cas, fully dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans, and socks that looked far too immaculate to belong to a seven-year-old, was sprawled out on the floor with an old 1000-piece puzzle he'd found in Bobby's closet, just nodded.

"Plus," Dean said, "It'll be a surefire way to see if your munchkin asses are really human or not."

"Go get cleaned up," Bobby groused. "And brush that hair. This place might be a sty, but that don't mean the doctor has to know it."

Ruby shot him a look full of contempt, but pushed herself up off the couch. She was so short that she actually had to halfway shimmy down the edge of the couch like it was a playground slide. "Right," she muttered. "Because I care sooo much what my pediatrician thinks of you…"

"The clothes are in one of the guest bedrooms," Bobby called at her retreating back. "Target bag. And wash your damn face!"

**TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

**Take Two  
>Chapter 4<strong>

When Ruby came to the door of the first bedroom, she heard an odd sound. Muttering.

She waited a moment, peeking into the bedroom, her face splitting into a wide grin at what she saw there.

Sam was pacing back and forth, a switchblade drawn, brandishing it in the air and talking to nobody. She couldn't see his face very well, but there was an air of desperation in his movements, an edge of hysteria in his voice.

"What do you want from me?" he was saying now, the knife glinting as he swung it towards the mirror. He laughed. The sound was manic. "You're not…you're not here. Leave."

Oh, this was just _too _good.

She stepped into the room, cleared her throat daintily.

Only to have him round on her, knife raised, with a strangled yell.

And she had to admit, for a second, it was fucking _terrifying. _She backed up several steps, a gasp escaping her own throat, clutching the door frame with one hand before she recovered. Back when she'd been in her five-foot-whatever body—bodies—he'd towered over her enough, but at _three-_foot-something?

Hot damn. It was enough to make her shit her princess panties.

Not that, aside from the whole _huge _thing, he wasn't completely pitiful. Because he was.

Obviously.

She let out a breath, regaining her composure, and smoothed out the front of her t-shirt. Sam lowered the weapon, but his grip didn't loosen any, and he the way he was looking at her…priceless.

Like he was afraid she was about to eat his face off or something.

She was familiar enough with what Hell could do to the brain—there was a good chance he was probably seeing maggots crawling out of her eye sockets and a hatchet in her hand. Something like that.

She tilted her head a bit. "Who isn't here, Sam?" she asked, lightly.

"Go away," he said.

"Or _what_?" she asked, flouncing right past him and crawling up onto the bed, where a cluster of Target bags sat. "You afraid I'm gonna crash your mad tea party?"

Sam didn't answer. She saw the fingers of his left hand twitch towards the bandaged part.

"Who is it, anyway?" She perched on the edge of the bed, grinning conspiratorially. "Is it him?" She didn't know for sure, but she'd overheard Dean and Bobby having a good few hushed conversations whenever Sam wasn't around about _him_.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said, when Sam just glared. His eyes looked bruised and slightly bloodshot—she wondered vaguely how much sleep, if any, he'd gotten recently. She swung her feet a little, her bare heels brushing against a tattered bed skirt. "So who is it?" she asked. "Is it him?"

Sam didn't answer for a long time. His gaze was level with a spot in the air a few feet in front of him, and he seemed to be listening to something. Then he turned back towards her, an odd expression on his face. Almost a smile.

"Yes."

"Good," she said, a little creeped out by that smile though damn if she'd let it show. "I'm glad. Tell him hi for me."

The weird smile grew a little wider, almost triumphant. "You should know, though…" he began.

"What?" Her feet stopped swinging.

"You should know what he really thinks of you."

Her stomach did a little flip flop at that. She ignored it. "And what's that?" She lifted her chin.

"You're garbage to him. Always were. And—" he cut off and flinched, as if he'd been struck, but swallowed and continued. "And it doesn't matter if you know that now, I guess, because what's he gonna do about it now?"

"You're lying." She didn't look at him. Her fists clenched by her sides.

"You know I'm not."

Her insides felt a little cold, but she pressed on. "Do I?" she sneered. "I was loyal. If it weren't for you, I would've helped him build a new world. But you? You locked him in a box. You deserve everything you got. And it is fucking priceless that he's still right there in your brain giving it to you, too."

Sam flinched again, but was making a visible effort to keep it together long enough to get his next words out. "If he'd gotten what he wanted, you would've been the first to go. Both of us would have. He hates humans, and demons more. You think he would've made any exceptions for a species that disgusts him? We were pawns."

"Shut up," she said in a low voice. She'd had a biting retort planned, something along the lines of _Well the I'd just have killed him first,_ but for some stupid reason it'd died on her tongue. Her vision was blurring. Which was so fucking _stupid_ because no matter what she'd seen in Cas's head he was _wrong_, he was wrong, he had to be— "Shut _up_," she repeated, swiping an angry fist over her eyes.

He still looked freaked out, and his eyes kept darting between Ruby and that spot in front of him, but he also seemed—marginally—triumphant. Bastard. Anger, and something _else, _something that closed up her throat and made her eyes sting, were roiling around inside of her, and she was powerless to stop it. And God did she hate it.

"So what have you two been up to, huh?" she asked abruptly, changing tactics, her head snapping up. "'Cause I feel kinda left out here, and I'm dying to know.

"None of your damn business," he said tightly, all traces of smugness melting off his face, jaw working as he stared straight ahead once more.

"You know I hope it's meat hooks," she said with a grin. "Personal favorite of mine."

Sam didn't answer, but his body froze, his breath catching. His eyes darted around, widening, as though he'd suddenly visualized just what she'd said.

Ruby snorted. "Power of suggestion's a beautiful thing, huh?" She planted a hand on her hip and smiled wryly up at him. "Oh man, if that's how this works, this could be fun. Hmmm…." She considered for a second. "Oh, I've got a good one. What about…" she took her time with the words, watching him watch her. "How 'bout hellhounds?" She laughed when she saw an involuntary fine tremor run through his body, and she wondered if he could hear growling.

His eyes snapped shut. "Leave," he ground out through clenched teeth. "Now."

"Oh, but I was just getting started," she said in mock disappointment. "I had all kinds of fun suggestions. Like how about—"

"_Enough_," came a voice from the doorway. They both wheeled around. It was Cas. His eyes flashed with an anger near superhuman at Ruby, and for all that he was only four-foot-something standing there, she had to say that if she hadn't known for a fact he was harmless, and that even like this she probably could've kicked his remorseful little ass, she would've been sort of intimidated by him. "Stop it," he leveled a glare at her. "Now."

She crossed her arms. "And what are you, his white knight or something?" she scoffed.

"Get your clothes, and leave," Cas said steadily.

"Or what?" she said, her own eyes challenging. "What are you gonna do to me? Snap your fingers and blow me up like one of those preachers? Or are you gonna break my head like you did his?" she jabbed a thumb in Sam's direction. Sam was watching Cas, looking a little wary. "'Cause let me tell you, it's cute that you're telling me to stop when it's you who did the damage here."

Cas opened his mouth to reply, but sounds from the hall behind him—heavy footfalls on the stairs—made them all freeze. Dean, probably.

"If that's Dean I suggest you leave," Cas said shortly.

And she hated to admit it but he had a point. She wasn't entirely convinced that he wouldn't change his mind about not harming her if she pushed the envelope too far, especially when it came to Sam. "Whatever," she snapped, pushing past Sam and crawling up onto the bed, angrily rifling through the bags and pulling out clothing at random. Anger burned hot just under her skin, mixed with more of that stupid chokey feeling that seemed to have flared back up for no apparent reason.

In the tense silence that followed while she tore clothing from the bags, she heard Cas clear his throat, awkwardly. "Sam—"

"Just go, Cas," Sam muttered.

A pause. "Alright."

He must have left, because when she turned back around with an armful of clothes, it was Dean who was standing in the doorway, eyes narrowing in suspicion when he saw her. "What are you—"

"Fuck you." She got up, crossed the room swiftly, and pushed past him into the hall.

Ten minutes later, Castiel found Ruby in the bathroom, perched on the toilet seat, her face red and her eyes watery, assaulting the back of her tangled hair with a hairbrush and muttering a low string of curses under her breath. She was dressed properly for the first time, in a bright purple shirt, pastel blue pants, and ruffled white socks, but her hair still appeared to be a hopeless mess.

He glanced her way, but said nothing as he stood on tiptoe to reach for his toothbrush on the counter, carefully squeezing out the bright blue paste onto the bristles as Bobby had showed him how to do last night.

By the time he'd finished, spitting the last of the toothpaste into the dingy sink, Ruby seemed to have given up on her hair, hunched over on the toilet with her head in her hands, the red plastic brush hanging tangled in her hair down near the small of her back.

When he didn't leave right away, she took her face out of her hands and shot him a venomous glare, though her eyes were red and a little puffy. "Take a picture, it'll last longer, asshole."

Not sure what any of that meant, he ignored her. "That wasn't wise. Taunting Sam."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't even—"

"I mean it," he said, coldly, cutting her off. "Fortunately for you it was me instead of Dean who walked in on you, for your own safety's sake."

"Please," she said, rubbing her eyes. "Like he'd really kill a little girl."  
>"You're not a little girl," Castiel told her. "Although…" he considered her demeanor, the angry tears she'd barely been able to conceal. "You're beginning to feel like one, aren't you?"<p>

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snapped, grabbing at the hair brush and tugging it.

"What Sam said about Lucifer," he said. He was almost certain he was wasting his time in speaking to her at all, particularly about this, but he was curious nonetheless. "You're beginning to…feel. Acutely. In a way you could not before. Doubt. Betrayal. Pain."

She made a dismissive noise and yanked at the brush halfheartedly. "All I'm _feeling _are my hair follicles getting ripped out of my scalp."

He ignored her again. "And it's because you know he was right."

She was silent. Then, "Leave me alone." There was not nearly as much heat to her words as he'd expected. Her voice was….oddly small.

"You know what I know. You've seen what I've seen," he pressed. "You know what would've become of you. You'd have been just as worthless as the others."

Then, suddenly, she'd hopped down from the toilet seat and was standing inches in front of him, her eyes flashing furiously, a finger jabbing into his chest. "And what makes so damn sure you know him so well, huh?" her voice was shrill, on the verge of hysterics. "Of course he'd have wanted you to think that your enemies were also his enemies. He isn't _stupid,_ Castiel."

"He is also not loyal to any being in the universe other than himself," Castiel said mildly. A second later he found himself being slammed against the bathroom wall, her hands on his shoulders. He took her hands off his shoulders, gripping her small wrists so that she couldn't land any blows. She glared daggers at him, her shoulders heaving with each hard breath she took. "And Sam saw through his ruses. That's why he fought him in the end," he persisted, holding her wrists steady when she tried to wrench away from him.

"And that's why he killed me, huh?" she hissed.

"Yes," Castiel said simply.

She scowled at him, but her eyes were wet again. She finally managed to yank a wrist away, and he let her, watching her impatiently swipe the back of her hand over her eyes.

"It's funny, all this coming from you," she said, voice shaky but full of venom nonetheless. "General consensus with you people is I was Lucifer's pawn, but Sam and Dean were _your _pawns, weren't they, _O Cas Almighty?_"

"I never said they weren't." It wasn't exactly easy to hear, the parallel between himself and Lucifer, but now that she was saying it, it was painfully clear. "And this is another reason I know you yourself were a pawn. My motives were in essence the same as his."

"Too bad that didn't work out for ya," she said, scathingly. "And here you are eating mac and cheese at their dinner table like nothing ever happened."

"I don't expect them to forget," Castiel said, quietly. "And I don't expect forgiveness."

"Oh, don't be a fucking martyr about it," Ruby muttered, returning to the toilet seat and finally working the brush free with both hands.

"It's merely fact," Cas said. "And it's also a fact that I would've kept going if it weren't for the Leviathans. Dean and Sam know it, and so do I."

"Then why the hell are you sticking around here for, anyway?" Ruby brushed furiously at a knot. "They aren't keeping you prisoner or anything, and I know they're just thrilled to see you."

And Castiel found himself without an answer. Ruby grinned, a little smug, when he found himself at a loss for words. "I see."

He was about to turn to go when it finally hit him, and the words were out before he realized it. "A second chance," he said.

Ruby sniggered. "A what?"

He turned, slowly. Though it had just become clear to him, he wasn't quite sure how to articulate it so that an ex-demon would understand it. Not that she would care, anyhow. "I can't undo what I've done," he said. "And I don't seek absolution. But I've got another chance now, an opportunity to not fail them again. And I intend to take it."

"You sound like a fucking Hallmark card."

He shrugged. "You've got a chance now, too, you know."

"A chance to what, exactly?" She raised an eyebrow, looking amused.

"To be spared Hell."

She dropped her gaze. The amusement in her eyes was pushed out by a bleak, distant look, the pain of hell painted onto a child's face. "Yeah," she said. "Like that'll happen."

"I wouldn't squander it."

He left then, but turning out of the bathroom and down the hall towards the stairs, only to be stopped by the sight of Dean, who obviously had not gone back downstairs yet, leaning against the wall near the bathroom. Last Castiel had seen him, he'd been talking to Sam, likely trying to talk him down from Ruby's exacerbation of his…current state. He looked marginally better-rested than he had when Cas had first come here a few days ago, but not by much, his eyes still dull and shadowy.

But it was the way that Dean was looking at him now that made him stop dead in his tracks. He looked confused, guarded, and—though it was hard for Cas to tell—possibly hopeful. All in all, the complete opposite of the sorts of looks that Dean had been giving over the past few days, which admittedly weren't many at all, as they'd tended to avoid one another.

"You heard…" Cas began, pointing vaguely back towards the bathroom door.

"I heard enough," Dean said.

"I suppose it doesn't change anything," Cas said, fighting a very human—and, he was guessing, childish—urge to shuffle his feet and fidget under Dean's scrutiny.

"Yeah, well," Dean said, shrugging, trying and failing to sound indifferent. "We'll see."

Cas nodded, slowly. "Alright."

**TBC**


	5. Chapter 5

**Take Two **

**Chapter 5**

**(Final chapter)**

An hour and a half before the appointment, the five of them, all piled into an ugly, beat-up old sedan of Bobby's, pulled up in front of a small diner that was across the street from the doctors' offices. The waitresses, a couple matronly, middle-aged women, were all smiles, apparently finding their "family" unbearably adorable. It was a sentiment that made them all rather want to gag, especially when Sam had stumbled, painfully awkwardly, over an explanation that Cas was his kid and Ruby was Dean's.

Bobby passed out a menu for Ruby and Cas, squished in a booth next to each other, to share. "Get what ya want, I guess," he said, turning to his own menu, before looking up with a slightly menacing, "—Within reason."

When one of the waitresses came by for their orders—"What'll it be, dears?"—Cas said, without hesitation, "Burger," while Ruby said at the same time, "Fries."

Penciled eyebrows shot up below frizzy bangs. "Alright…" She glanced vaguely from Dean to Sam to Bobby, trying to figure out which of them was a parent. "That alright with you folks?"

"Have 'em split a meal," Bobby said. "That'll be fine."

When their plate finally came, the two of them descended on it like sharks, much to the waitresses' amusement. And they were all pretty hungry—as much as having been raised on diner food had sucked sometimes, at least in Sam's opinion, you forgot how much you could miss it when you hadn't had it in awhile. There was a familiarity about the whole situation that calmed his nerves that were still frazzled from earlier today, and if he ignored Cas and Ruby, and pretended that he couldn't see Lucifer out of the corner of his eye at a booth popping onion rings into his mouth with relish, he was almost content. At any rate, appetites spared them all the need for conversation, which was good, because he had absolutely nothing to say to two out of the other four people at the table without the risk of his brain cracking any more than it already had.

Cas was methodically, studiously ripping his burger into chunks, while Ruby gleefully dunked her fries in too much ketchup and crammed them in her mouth. Dean had a look of near indecent pleasure on his face while he chewed on a mouthful of his own burger, while Bobby was half-lost in perusing a local newspaper in case there were any indicators that any Leviathans had escaped. During Ruby and Cas's appointment, he'd be running errands—post office, grocery store, hardware store and such—partially for the purpose of keeping an ear out for rumors of anything the papers might've missed. Sam stabbed his fork into his coleslaw, almost defiantly. For now, he was okay. This could be a good day. He was determined it would be.

Dean eventually got up to scope out dessert choices, all laid out behind a glass case at the diner counter. In an additional to give this whole day the finger, he told Dean to get him one of whatever he was getting. He'd take a leaf out of Dean's book here, the philosophy that it's really damn hard to be sad while eating pie. He hoped the same went for insanity.

Everybody was so lost in their own individual reverie that, when Ruby finally spoke, Sam started. It took him a minute to realize that she was talking to him.

"Sam," she was saying. "Hey."

Sam didn't answer. He didn't answer, because he knew if he did, there was very little keeping him from a repeat of earlier today, and that there was a pretty damn good chance that whatever Ruby had to say would interest Lucifer more than his onion rings.

"_Sam,_" she repeated, annoyed. Not looking at her, he shook his head minutely, and opted instead to stare out the window. A bright, chilly small-town day stared right back at him from without. The leaves were changing. A few people wandered back and forth in front of shop windows. It all looked so damn _pleasant_ and normal. Ruby made a little irritated noise in her throat.

"He don't have to talk to you if he don't want," Bobby's voice rumbled. The sound grounded Sam, a balm to his shot nerves.

"Alright, fine, whatever," came Ruby's voice, muffled by a mouth full of fries. "Was just gonna call a truce, is all."

"What?" _That _got Sam's attention, and his eyes flicked to hers.

"Yeah. A truce," she said, licking ketchup from her finger. "Thought you people liked that sort of thing."

Cas, sitting next to her, was staring at her oddly, a piece of burger seemingly forgotten in his hand halfway to his mouth.

Bobby put his paper down. "And what the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"I _mean, _about earlier. As much fun as it was, me and the devil won't double-team Sam anymore." She fidgeted a bit, the contempt on five-year-old features making her look pouty and petulant.

Well, _that_ was unexpected, to say the least.

"Why the sudden change of heart?" Bobby asked, eyebrows disappearing beneath the brim of his hat.

"Oh, believe me, there wasn't one," she said, disdainfully, rolling her eyes up at the ceiling. "It's just for the sake of my well-being. _He_—" she jabbed a thumb at Dean's back, who was now paying for four slices of Boston crème, as it would've looked bad if he hadn't bought an extra dessert for the "kids" to share—"has been looking at me all day like he's visualizing me as roadkill. I'm just covering my own ass here."

On the edges of his vision, Sam could see one of the waitresses watching them with an expression of shock. Apparently the way a small child was talking down to a man old enough to be her grandfather, and insinuating violence against herself, wasn't something small-town America was used to seeing.

"Yeah, well, you ain't stupid, I'll give ya that," Bobby growled.

Ruby heaved a sigh. "Anyways, yeah, I figure that if you two are constantly breathing down my neck to make sure I'm not being nasty to poor Sammy here, my many and varied privileges within the Singer household might be at stake. Just imagine. A ban on macaroni and cheese." She popped another fry in her mouth. "Mmm. _God_, these are fantastic, by the way."

Sam frowned. This was…weird. If he had to guess, this was either coming out of her mouth because, God forbid, she really _was _starting to let humanity get to her and this was some half-assed, backhanded way of spitting out an apology, or else it was because— "Who put you up to this?" he asked her.

She snorted. "Well, mostly it's just me being pre-emptive here because I don't have a death wish. But, and color me surprised, this guy. Right here." She pointed at Cas with a fry, a little smile on her face.

"What?" Sam blinked. Cas didn't say anything, but he looked up, briefly, at Sam, expression exceedingly uncomfortable. "…Oh."

Sam must've looked just as uncomfortable, because Ruby looked up at him, then at Cas, and back to him, and laughed. "Aaand let the awkwardness begin."

Sam had barely said two words to Cas since this whole ordeal began. Ninety percent of the reason for that was the fact that Sam had been…distracted, and the rest of it was because Cas had tended to disappear a lot, spending his time wandering around the salvage yard doing God-knew-what. It should've occurred to him that he'd been avoiding them, and probably for good reason, considering all of the shit that had piled up between Cas and Dean. But, more startling to him, it hadn't quite hit home with Sam himself yet until now that Cas was the reason that Lucifer currently was over there leering at him through a mouth full of onion rings. And that was not a can of worms that Sam's brain or emotions wanted to try to process right now. There'd be time for that later. But for now…he supposed it was a good sign, that Cas had told Ruby not to kick him while he was down.

But seven years old or no, Cas's eyes were still capable of doing that unsettling, x-ray scanning thing. He was watching Sam in a manner that suggested he was both deeply penitent and also anxious to gauge Sam's reaction.

"Uh…" Sam began, not really sure how he was supposed to respond to this. "Thanks, I guess?"

But a "thank you" didn't exactly sound right in this situation, they both knew. And neither did Cas's equally strained, "Of course." Bobby looked a little incredulous, and Ruby just rolled her eyes.

Sam was pretty sure that Cas could read _now's-not-the-time-or-place _in his expression, because he nodded a little—_I know—_and slipped right back into his now-usual silence when Dean came back, balancing four pie plates.

But, of course, all that implied that eventually there _would _be a time or a place. Which he supposed he could deal with when the time came.

...

"_Hold hands?_ Are you freakin' _kidding _me?" Ruby was glowering up at Dean as though she'd rather die, holding her hand protectively against her chest.

"It seems to be the customary practice for parents and children at busy intersections," Cas said, watching a young mother and her toddler crossing another crosswalk about a block away from them, her hand wrapped tight around his fat little wrist.

"Shut up, Cas," she muttered.

Cas shrugged, but held his own hand up for Sam to take. The two of them walked past and began to cross the intersection.

"Look, I'm not thrilled about it either, believe me, but he's got a point," Dean said. "If you wanna use our asses to shield you from Crowley you at least gotta play along. Pretend to be normal." He scrutinized her for a second. "Well, normal-ish," he amended.

"Oh yeah, because _those _two are totally the picture of a healthy father-son relationship," she said, pointing at Sam and Cas, who were both holding themselves very stiffly as they walked, Sam's hand barely clasped around Cas's at all. "They look like they're both afraid the other's gonna go crazy and murder them." She paused. "Which, y'know, is valid, considering—"

"Can it," Dean cut her off, and reached for her hand. "Come on. The light's about to change."

"Fine." Then she smiled, then added, "Daddy."

The look on Dean's face at the word suggested that he'd just tasted or smelled something highly unpleasant. He didn't take the bait, though, because there were a few other people milling around, some crossing ahead of them. "Funny," he muttered. "Real funny. Just come on."

She raised an eyebrow at him, challenging. "Fine then." She took his hand.

"Fine." He held her hand tight, his hand completely engulfing hers, and pulled her forward.

Ruby let herself be carried along for a few steps. She held on tighter, wiggling her fingers around to get purchase inside his, before digging her nails, hard, into the most sensitive spots she could reach. She heard him hiss in pain, his fingers flexing, but he didn't let go.

"Problem?" she said lightly, looking up at him.

He gave her a murderous glare, swearing under his breath as she dug her nails even deeper into his skin. "God, you are so grounded for this…" he growled between clenched teeth.

When they finally reached the other side, Ruby let go of his hand, laughing, and practically skipped forward to catch up to where Cas was walking a few yards ahead of Sam.

There were angry, crescent-shaped nail marks in his palm and between the joints of his fingers by the time they reached the other side. One of them was bleeding.

And regardless of whether it was totally screwed up of him to find amusement in the fact that he wasn't the only one Ruby was torturing now, Sam looked like he was having a bit of a hard time keeping a straight face.

"Dead," Dean whispered so that the old lady standing not six feet from them wouldn't hear. "She is so dead." Sam's lips twitched. "And if you laugh you're dead to me too," he added viciously.

"'Kay. Sorry."

"Sure you are."

...

"And now we have to _wait_?" Ruby slumped over to a faded, salmon-pink couch that wasn't occupied by an assortment of either sick and fussy or incredibly noisy and rowdy children waiting to be seen or their bored or anxious-looking parents. "But we're here on time." She picked up an old copy of_ Oprah_ magazine, flipped through the first few pages, and tossed it aside, flopping onto the couch with a dramatic sigh. "The walls are the color of puke in here," she noted idly, pointing at the pinstriped yellow wallpaper. Cas climbed onto the couch next to her, drawing his knees and feet up so that he was sitting cross-legged, regarding the other children with wide, wary eyes.

"The doc'll be out in a few minutes," Sam said, flipping through some paperwork on a clipboard. "This is gonna take awhile, isn't it?" he muttered to Dean, who was holding a clipboard of his own, along with a folder containing all of Ruby and Cas's forged documents.

"Yup," Dean muttered back. Then, to Ruby, he added, "_Normal, _remember? So play nice and all that."

"Aw, dang it," she said dryly, in a voice loud enough for the entire room to hear. "And I only tagged along because I thought I was gonna get to eat some babies." Several pairs of eyes inevitably turned their way. She smiled sweetly around at them all.

Dean laughed, once, loudly, breaking the silence that had ensued after Ruby's words. "Hah, yeah, kids say the darndest things and all that, right?" But the gaze he leveled at her was livid.

Sam had cleared his throat loudly and brandished his clipboard at Dean, jerking his head towards an empty pair of chairs on the opposite side of the room. Dean complied, and left with him, but not before mouthing a _You're DEAD _back at her over his shoulder.

A minute stretched into five. Five stretched into ten. Ruby sunk down onto the couch, half-lying on it, her feet dangling off the front, and stared up at the tiled ceiling. Cas remained silent, apparently focused on whatever was on the TV that had attracted the attention of a small crowd of excited preschool-aged girls—something with jarringly bright colors, obnoxiously high-pitched voice acting, and painfully cheerful music. The _Oprah _magazine that Ruby had thrown aside was sitting open in his lap, apparently having caught his attention but forgotten for the sake of the TV.

Ruby let out a long breath. The scents of disinfectant and unwashed children hung heavy in the air. Over in one corner, two little boys—siblings, by the looks of it—were having a shrieking argument about which one of them "gets ta play Angry Birds on Mommy's iPad until the doctor comes out." Clamping her hands over her ears didn't help to block it out, either. She tried.

God, if somebody asked her which she'd preferred, this or Purgatory, she'd almost be tempted to say Purgatory.

Almost.

Two mind-numbing minutes and she couldn't take it anymore. She was even willing to strike up a conversation with Castiel—at least he'd provide her with some measure of intelligent conversation, even if every other thing he said pissed her off—to distract herself from…_this._

But no, he was too distracted by that stupid pony show—that was about the extent of her knowledge, that it seemed to be about talking ponies—to pay her any heed.

She stared at the TV.

Some hick-looking pony with a straw hat, an exaggerated southern accent, and a picture of an apple on the side of its ass was talking: _What in the name of all things cinnamon swirled is a full-grown dragon doing here in Equestria?_

"…The hell is this?" she mumbled, not bothering to sit up anymore than was necessary to see the TV.

"The best I can figure, the ponies are attempting to subdue a sleeping dragon," Castiel said, in a voice that indicated equal parts bewilderment and intense interest.

"Why….?"

"I believe the smoke from its snoring makes it difficult for them to breathe. They wish it to move elsewhere."

"Oh."

She watched for a moment. This shit was pretty mindless—she'd give it that. She'd be on that examining table getting needles stuck in her arm by some white-coated bastard before she knew it. One of the girls sitting on the nubby brown carpet—a spunky-looking redhead in overalls— in front of the TV let out a little whoop and cheer whenever a particular pony came onscreen. A blue winged pony with a rainbow tail sprouting from its butt, and from what she could tell so far, the most badass character in the whole show. It was teasing and goading some pink and yellow cream puff looking pony about not being brave enough to face the dragon.

Ruby snorted, lifting a finger towards the screen were the rainbow-butted pony was currently scaling a magical mountain or something. "So what's this one, the gay pride pony?"  
>Cas's brow furrowed. "Her name is Rainbow Dash. And I could be wrong but I don't believe that her sexual orientation has any bearing on the plot."<p>

"See, that's where you're wrong," Ruby said, propping herself up a little on her elbows. "Now if you ask me, it's all a big metaphor for gay pride. See, the rainbow one is just trying to get the useless yellow one—"

"Fluttershy," Cas supplied.

"—whatever. The rainbow one is trying to get Fluttershy to face the evil dragon of homophobia so that she can finally love and accept herself for who she truly is."

The furrow in Cas's brow deepened. "Really?"

She shrugged. "Isn't it obvious?"

"No."

"Well. Shows what you know."

Cas was silent for a long moment. Then, "I can't tell if you're purposely trying to confuse me or not."

Ruby laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Like some dam in her had finally broke, and she couldn't help it. She wasn't even sure what was so funny anymore after the first five seconds, but it bubbled up inside her nonetheless. Hell, maybe it was some kind of pent-up hysteria. Probably. Whatever. Still felt damn good.

The look Cas gave her suggested that he was somewhere between perplexed and frightened by this. From the other side of the room, Dean and Sam were looking at her like she'd sprouted another head.

Okay.

Maybe this really _did _trump Purgatory.

Certainly trumped Hell.

Not by much, but still.

***End***

**Final note: If you HAVEN'T SEEN THE ART FOR THIS, you have to check out my Livejournal, because Farfadine's watercolor pieces are gorgeous. There's a picture of the whole My Little Pony bit, which actually was the artwork that inspired the entire fic, and then there's one of Cas and Ruby looking adorable and/or sinister in Dean's overly large t-shirts. Again: (crazybeagle) (dot) (livejournal) (dot) (com), or (farfadine) (dot) (livejournal) (dot) (com). **


End file.
